


doomed but just enough

by blithelybonny



Series: Suitehearts [17]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Kent Is Trying But It’s Hard Sometimes, Lent, Mental Health Issues, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Roman Catholicism, Self-Derogatory Language, Two Steps Forward One Step Back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29536986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blithelybonny/pseuds/blithelybonny
Summary: “Do they teach that shit in Sunday school,mister?”
Relationships: Kent "Parse" Parson & Original Male Character(s)
Series: Suitehearts [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/876810
Comments: 11
Kudos: 32





	doomed but just enough

**Author's Note:**

> *shows up two years later with a mental health attack and confused feelings about a benevolent God* Welcome back to Suitehearts? ♥️
> 
> Title is from, I hope fittingly, FOB’s Church.

February 2020

The boys all pile into Kent’s kitchen after their practice for food and a pre-game nap, except Nelly, who’d had to go find a chapel, Benji said, because he missed the group trip to St. Sabina’s 5:30 morning mass before the plane ride to Vegas. Every year it catches Kent by surprise. Because yeah, he’s Catholic too, except he can’t remember the last time he went to church for anything other than a funeral and he only remembers he’s not supposed to eat meat on Fridays when he’s already halfway through his steak.

_I’m Baptist, hun_ , Bitty had corrected him once, _but Sabina’s has such a beautiful altar!_ And actually, Kent’s pretty sure Milo is an atheist, or maybe just doesn’t like having shit on his forehead, but still, they all went except Nelly who was probably sleeping off their much-too-late combination drink all the vodka/jerk off session last night. They’re really getting too old for this shit. Fuck, Kent is getting too old for this shit. 

Kent didn’t have any tuna, and Soup had objected strongly to the leftover salmon from Kent’s dinner last night, so...

It feels ironic, even though it isn’t, to be slathering peanut butter and grape jelly onto thin pieces of Wonder Bread while Bitty makes little passive-aggressive noises under his breath. They’re pretty much totally past the weirdness between them, but jelly versus jam and what constitutes the traditional pre-game sandwich is always going to be a sore spot that Kent likes to press into. He’s always loved the way his bruises feel mostly because he feels like he’s usually earned them. “You want one too, Bits?” he asks, unable to help himself.

“I’m fine, sugar,” Bitty replies in that airy, dismissive way he has about him sometimes, when Kent can see clearly how Jack fell for him and then stayed in it as long as he did rather than start trouble.

But Kent kinda loves to start trouble, actually, when he can control it, and there’s something ugly under his skin right now that’s making him want to sink his teeth into someone until they yield. God knows why. Maybe literally, he thinks, and yeah fucking hell something’s making his insides feel like there’s gum in the works, all slow and molasses-heavy but not in the fun way like when he’s just this side of drunk and Nelly’s smushing him down into the couch and kissing on him all slow and sweet.

“PB&J not good enough for your refined tastes?” Kent asks, as he plates the shitty sandwiches and slides them across the marble countertop island between them. Miley’s shoulders hunch up around his ears immediately at the nails-on-a-chalkboard sound, and Benji’s hand hovers over his head for a moment before Miley nods and Benji drops it probably a little too heavily to feel good, but Miley doesn’t seem to mind since he presses up into the contact even as he stares down at his sandwich like it’s the only thing that matters.

“Kent Parson, you watch your mouth,” Bitty replies, still polite, but pointed. The ash on his forehead is really heavy on the up and down line but not so much on the sideways line. It’s distracting. “I’m not the one who just skated for an hour, mister.”

“Do they teach that shit in Sunday school, _mister_?”

“Parser, buddy, what the fuck?” Soup asks, coming around the island to manhandle Kent into a hug. Kent leans into it even though he doesn’t want to. There’s always going to be some part of him that won’t say no now that he gets to have this without feeling like someone is going to smell the homo on him.

The thing about Nelly is that he always makes Kent feel like he’s fine just as he is, that it doesn’t matter who sees because fuck’em anyway, except that then Nelly goes to church and he gets on his knees and tells some priest all his sins and a few Hail Marys later he’s back on his bullshit, and Kent fucking loves him so much that sometimes he’s terrified of how easy Nelly is for him. It’s been years now, literal actual years, and Kent thinks he’s supposed to have it together by now. He’s supposed to know in his heart and his gut that Nelly is his and even though Nelly is everyone’s too, Nelly is still his, and Kent—

Kent doesn’t always feel like sharing him, even though that’s what he promised.

“I don’t know, sorry,” he mutters more into Soup’s broad chest than anything, but he thinks Bitty hears him and he’ll probably be forgiven but it’s also probably going to take a while. Bitty holds a grudge better than anyone Kent’s ever met, himself included.

“Somebody’s cranky,” Soup says, laughing (because he’s always been good at chirping the tension away), “and needs his nap so we can kick his ass all over that ice tonight.”

“Finish your sandwiches,” Kent replies, again into the meat of Soup’s pecs, and maybe he’s motorboating a little, but too slowly for Soup to notice and not like he would anyway because he’s their token hockey straight, which is a little like being gay without the dick-sucking. He gives himself another moment and Soup squeezes him, and then Kent makes himself step out of the embrace to look Bitty in the eye and say sorry again, like he means it this time.

“Oh you’re fine, hun,” Bitty says, which means he’s not fine, but Bitty doesn’t care enough to fight back at the moment, and that more than anything is a strange type of comfort.

There’s a headache coming on low at the base of his skull, and it could be the hangover or it could be the tension, but Kent deserves it because he’s being a bitch for no reason other than that his head isn’t screwed on right, and he doesn’t fucking know why. It’s not like anything out of the ordinary has happened lately. It’s not like Needs or Carly have been more overt than usual about what they think they fucking know about Kent and his Seattle boys; it’s not like Swoops or Scraps have been anything other than totally fucking normal when Kent begged off boys night to stay on the phone with Nelly and Benji; it’s nothing and it’s fucking stupid that he’s spiraling for literally no fucking reason, like he’s fucking Zimms or something and someone made a passing fucking comment about Zimms’s dad.

“Other Dad,” says Miley, head cocked to the side now, though Benji’s big hand is still there holding him in place, “I think you’re having a panic attack.”

Jesus, so maybe he _is_ Zimms.

As soon as the thought passes through his head, though, Kent deflates because god, he’s being so unfair and so ridiculous, and it’s all, he thinks, because they all went out and got their little fucking forehead marks together and they left Nelly behind and then Nelly _still went and got one_ , like it matters, like it’s important, like God is watching to make sure that they all do their little rituals and they pray and they cry and just _why_?

“Nah, Mo, I’m fine,” Kent says, flipping the switch that goes from giant mess to hell yes. He smiles, the big camera-friendly one because Mo won’t be able to tell the difference, and Benji might but he won’t say anything, and Soup definitely will but he definitely won’t say anything, and Jesus Christ, Kent is a fucking asshole. “Finish your sammich and then come Swedish flop on my bed, yeah?”

Miley frowns and starts drumming on the table top in front of him. “Um, no? No, I think you’re upset and I don’t want to sleep in there with you if you’re mad?”

The gum in the works feels even tackier now because of all the work it takes not to say something so fucking vile that he’d more than deserve it if none of them ever spoke to him again. He thinks it and then he fucking hates himself, and the hating himself must show on his face, so his camera-ready mask isn’t secure enough clearly, because Benji walks around the island now and wordlessly tugs Kent out of the room.

When they get to Kent’s bedroom, Kent lets himself be undressed down to his underwear, lets himself be carried into the bed and lets himself be tucked in. He watches Benji turn off the lights, but then Benji waits until Kent puts his sleep mask on to start taking off his own clothes. Kent feels the bed dip with his weight and then Benji presses Kent into the mattress, settling on top of him and sighing in a way that makes Kent slides his hands up Benji’s back to scratch gently through his hair. “Good boy,” Kent whispers, and his voice only cracks a little before he manages to get it together. “You always know what I need, don’t you?”

Benji sets his teeth against Kent’s collarbone, and Kent smiles a little when he bites down just enough to make Kent feel it.

“I’m sorry,” he then says, and this third time’s the charm, because it’s real and he feels it in his bones that he fucked up. He’ll tell Miley and Bitty and Soup after they wake up, and hopefully they’ll accept it with the grace he knows they all have.

Later, Travis posts a picture of his forehead with the caption _i write tragedies, not sins_ on Instagram and tags Spenser, and Kent thinks he’ll never really understand what it means to give something up. But confession seems like something he can learn how to do.

**Author's Note:**

> For more fun or to yell at ~~me~~ us, jump on over to the [tumblr](https://omgcp-suitehearts.tumblr.com/).


End file.
